Report: Fracking raising water supply worries

10:24 PM,
Feb. 5, 2014

A new report suggests fracking has raised some water supply worries.

Written by

Julie Schmit
Gannett

The USA's domestic energy boom is increasing demands on water supplies already under pressure from drought and growing populations, a new report says.

The water-intensive process used to extract oil and gas from shale underground - known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking - has required almost 100 billion gallons of water to drill more than 39,000 oil and shale gas wells in the U.S. since 2011, says Ceres, a green investment group.

More than half of those wells - 55 percent - were in drought-stricken areas, and nearly half were in regions under high or extremely high water stress, such as ...